Let Us Talk to Our Inner Self Once Again

I wish to speak to my mind once again.

We do not take much time to speak with others.

We talk at home.

We talk with friends.

We speak on the telephone. We write on social media. We talk to others about ourselves.

We talk about others too.

But how often do we speak to ourselves?

And when we do, do we truly speak honestly?

When I asked myself this question, my mind took me far back into the past.

We are formed as a tiny embryo in our mother's womb, and after ten months, we enter this world.

We know the day of our birth.

But we do not fully know where we were before that birth.

In the same way, we know that this present life will one day come to an end, but we do not know when that end will be.

The small span of time between birth and death is what we call “my life.”

Yet the strange thing is that, even though we know how short this life is, we live as though it will never end.

We assume tomorrow will certainly come.

We make plans believing that next year will certainly be there.

We postpone many things thinking that we are going to live for many more years.

We leave some expressions of love unspoken.

We leave some forgiveness ungiven.

We leave some truths unaccepted.

We leave some dreams untouched.

“We still have plenty of time,” we tell ourselves.

But life never tells us, “You still have this many days left.”

That is one of the greatest mysteries of life.

This is how the average human life moves forward.

We are born.

We grow.

We learn.

We work.

We build families.

We seek material possessions.

We seek fame.

We seek recognition.

We try to prove our worth to others.

And somewhere in the middle of that race, a question arises within us:

“What am I really searching for?”

It is a simple question.

But its answer is not simple.

Because the answer may bring certain truths about ourselves and place them directly before our eyes.

It may tell us that we have not always been right.

It may tell us that we have trusted the wrong people.

It may tell us that, in some situations, we ourselves were at fault.

It may ask us to accept that someone else can sometimes do something better than we can.

It may even make us realise that, at times, the reason for our failure was not the circumstances, but our own ego.

That is why we sometimes keep our distance from certain truths.

Not because we do not know the truth.

But because accepting the truth may require us to change something about the way we live.

It is easy to say, “I speak the truth.”

But what happens when the truth is about us?

Then accepting that same truth is not quite so easy.

We have no hesitation in pointing out the mistakes of others.

But if someone tells us that we have made the same mistake, our mind immediately builds a protective wall.

“It wasn't like that.”

“I didn't do that.”

“I had no choice but to act that way in those circumstances.”

“They were the reason.”

We create a thousand explanations to defend ourselves.

The human mind is a very strange thing.

To protect itself, it can even bend the truth a little.

That is why the first step towards self-improvement is not changing the world outside us.

It is learning to look honestly at ourselves.

When a mirror shows us the dirt on our face, we cannot blame the mirror.

In the same way, when life shows us our shortcomings, we must learn not to blame life.

My own life has not been without such moments.

As the stiffness of youth gradually softens and I stand at the threshold of old age, I look back.

The decisions I made.

The opportunities I avoided.

The people I trusted.

The people I failed to trust.

The words I spoke.

The words I left unspoken.

Some moments I considered to be victories.

Some experiences I considered to be failures.

Today I turn through all of them like old textbooks from the school of life.

Some lessons I could not understand then, I understand today.

Some problems that seemed enormous at the time now seem small.

Some people whom I once considered insignificant now seem to have given me some of life's greatest gifts through their love.

Some things I once considered victories now appear simply as experiences.

That is one of the great gifts that age gives us.

With the passage of time, certain truths become clearer.

But before we can understand those truths, we must first learn to put our ego aside, at least a little.

There is a beautiful idea in a popular spiritual story based on the Mahabharata.

The great war of the Mahabharata is over.

The Pandavas have won and are seated upon the throne.

According to that story, someone asks Krishna a question:

“Krishna! You have such immense love for the Pandavas.

You arranged for your sister Subhadra to marry Arjuna.

When they gambled away their kingdom and were forced to go into exile, could you not have prevented it?”

The essence of the answer attributed to Krishna in that story is fascinating.

The idea expressed is that Yudhishthira could have asked someone else to play on his behalf, but the ego contained in his thought, “I will play myself,” also played a part in his decision.

Whether we take this story as a historical event or as a spiritual metaphor is a separate question.

But the life lesson contained within it is profound.

The problem begins when the feeling of “I” becomes the arrogance of “I alone.”

Many of us are talented.

That is true.

We can do many things well.

That is also true.

But the problem begins when we believe that we can do everything better than everyone else.

In a family, one person may be good with numbers.

Another may be talented at cooking.

Someone else may be good at relating to people.

Another may be skilled in technology.

That does not make anyone smaller.

The world does not function through the ability of one person alone.

Life moves forward because the abilities of many people come together.

Once we understand this, a great sense of peace arises within us.

We begin to accept:

“Someone else may know what I do not know.”

“Someone else may be able to do what I cannot do.”

“Someone else may possess a perspective that I do not have.”

Then competition begins to diminish.

Jealousy begins to diminish.

Mental stress begins to diminish.

We begin to see people simply as human beings.

A line popularly attributed to the great Tamil poet Kannadasan comes to my mind:

“Understand through wisdom; otherwise, experience will teach you.”

How simple those words are!

And yet, how much of life they contain!

Some lessons can be learned through knowledge.

We can learn from the mistakes of others.

We can learn from a small piece of advice.

We can learn from a book.

We can learn from the experience of an elder.

If we are unwilling to learn in these ways, life itself will teach us the lesson.

And then the price may be much higher.

That is why experience is a great teacher.

But experience is not always an inexpensive teacher.

For some lessons, we may have to pay with our tears.

For some lessons, we may have to lose relationships.

Some lessons require years to understand.

Some lessons become clear only after we grow older.

Therefore, learning from the experiences of others is a sign of wisdom.

Accepting the truth is not accepting defeat.

Rather, it is opening the door to the next victory.

If we can say, “Yes, I was wrong here,” we can try not to make the same mistake again.

If we can accept, “I failed to understand this person,” we will be more careful in our next relationship.

If we can accept, “I cannot do everything,” we will learn to ask for help.

If we can accept, “My body and my age have their limitations,” we will begin to enjoy life in a different way.

If we can accept, “Everything is not within my control,” the mind becomes peaceful.

This is the power of accepting the truth.

Truth does not break us.

It is our resistance to truth that breaks us.

Life is not a story that we can keep writing exactly as we wish.

We write some of its pages.

Circumstances write some.

Other people write some.

Some pages are written unexpectedly.

Our task is not to keep pulling at every page and trying to rewrite it according to our wishes.

The wisdom of life lies in reading the page that has already been written and learning how to write the next page better.

We cannot change the past.

But we can change the way we understand the past.

We cannot erase what happened.

But we can learn from what happened.

We may not be able to bring back those who have left us.

But we can carry the lessons they left behind.

We cannot erase the mistakes we have made.

But we can make sure we do not repeat them.

This is self-improvement.

How long is our life in the vast flow of cosmic time?

Like a bubble of water.

For a few moments, it catches the sunlight and sparkles.

Then it bursts.

Our life is much the same.

What matters is not merely how long we lived.

What matters is how we lived.

How many houses did we build, compared with how many hearts did we find a place in?

How much money did we accumulate, compared with how much love did we give?

How many people did we defeat, compared with how many people did we understand?

How many times did we prove that our opinion was right, compared with how many times did we accept the truth in another person's perspective?

These may be the real questions we face one day when we meet ourselves.

I am not saying that we must completely destroy the sense of “I.”

We cannot live without a sense of “I.”

But “I” should be our identity.

It should never become our master.

We need the confidence to say, “I can do it.”

But we do not need the arrogance to say, “Only I can do it.”

We need the confidence to say, “I know.”

But we do not need the illusion to say, “I know everything.”

We may feel the happiness of saying, “I did it.”

But we do not need the pride of saying, “This could never have happened without me.”

These small distinctions are what elevate a human being from within.

Today, standing at the threshold of old age and looking back, one thing has become clear to me.

In life, we search for many things.

Money.

Position.

Fame.

Love.

Recognition.

Success.

But ultimately, what we need to search for is ourselves.

Who are we?

Why are we living?

What are we going to leave behind?

What difference have we made in the lives of those around us?

What unnecessary anger are we still holding within our hearts?

Whom do we need to forgive?

From whom do we need to ask forgiveness?

What truth do we need to accept?

What ego do we need to let go of?

When we begin to seek answers to these questions quietly, many of life's puzzles slowly begin to unfold.

Accepting what we cannot change is not weakness.

Trying to change what we can change is wisdom.

Trying to change what cannot be changed only causes unnecessary suffering.

Using “fate” as an excuse to give up on what can be changed is laziness.

Wisdom lies somewhere between these two extremes.

When should we fight?

When should we wait?

When should we speak?

When should we remain silent?

When should we hold on?

When should we let go?

When should we stand firm and say, “I am right”?

When should we have the humility to say, “I may be wrong”?

The answers to these questions are the real education that life teaches us.

Today, as I speak once again with my own mind, there is only one thing I wish to tell it:

“Do not be afraid of the truth!”

Accept it, even when it hurts.

Accept it, even when it humbles you.

Accept it, even when it forces you to change some of your old beliefs.

Because only after we accept the truth does the door to change open.

Living by deceiving ourselves may comfort the mind for a while.

But living by accepting the truth is what gives us lasting peace.

We do not know how much time life has given us.

But, to some extent, how we live that time is within our hands.

So,

Let us open our hearts.

Let us accept the truth.

Let us lower our ego a little.

Let us respect the abilities of others.

Let us not hesitate to ask for help where we cannot manage alone.

Let us admit our mistakes when we make them.

Let us forgive whenever we can.

Let us ask for forgiveness whenever we can.

Let us be slightly better human beings today than we were yesterday.

That is enough.

Because, at the end of life, what comes with us is not our positions, our possessions or our fame.

It is the way we lived.

The love we gave.

The good memories we left behind.

The human hearts we touched.

These are the true footprints of our lives.

Between birth and death, we have been given this brief span of time.

Let us not make it heavy with the burden of “I.”

Let us walk through it lightly, beneath the shade of “We.”

One day, this curtain of illusion will fall.

Before that happens, let us play the role we have accepted upon the stage of life with sincerity.

Without hiding the truth.

Without forgetting love.

Without becoming slaves to our ego.

Let us keep speaking with our inner selves...

And let us live as human beings.

You can do it.

With affection,
Sakthi Sakthithasan